The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin'

by Lamb, Wally

  “But that’s stupid. That’s just throwing her vote away.” I got up. Sat down again. “So it’s a hung jury then? Man, this sucks!”

  Sheffer reminded me their team was just advisory, anyway. “Just the lowly medical professionals who have actually worked with the patient.” The Review Board was the real jury, she said. She told me the team had decided to write up the vote as is—explain that they were split, with one abstention. So there’d be no clear recommendation either way.

  “Then they’ll go with what the two shrinks want, right? Aren’t the doctors’ opinions going to overrule yours and the nurse’s?” Her finger tapped against her lip. She said if it weren’t a sexist world—if male doctors didn’t still sit up on Mount Olympus—then she’d say no. But, unfortunately, I was probably right.

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Patel,” I said. “I’ll get her to un-abstain.”

  Sheffer shook her head. “It’s a done deal, paisano. I know you’re disappointed, but think about it: it could have been worse. It could have been a 3-to-2 recommendation to retain him here. With the political pressure from the state and a vote like that, Hatch would have been a foregone conclusion. At least we still have one last chance to lobby for his release tomorrow. Let’s go for it.”

  I snorted a little at that one. Yea, rah rah. Sheffer as head cheerleader.

  She asked me if I’d gotten the letters. “All two of them,” I said, handing them over. Between us, we had approached twelve people about the possibility of writing letters to the Review Board advocating my brother’s release from Hatch. We’d gotten refusals from all but two. “I like this one,” Sheffer said, holding up the letter from Dessa.

  “I can’t believe Dr. Ehlers reneged on us,” I said. “First he says he’ll write one. Then I go over to his office to pick it up and his receptionist says he’s changed his mind. You know what I think? I think someone from the state got to him—told him not to write the thing.”

  Sheffer smiled. Told me I was starting to sound a little paranoid, like someone else she knew. I stared back at her, not laughing. “Okay, let’s focus on what we’ve got instead of what we didn’t get,” she said. “And we still need to put the finishing touches on your argument. Because I think that if anyone’s going to sway the Board, Domenico, it’s you who has the best shot.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. As long as that Sicilian temper of yours doesn’t flare up.”

  I got up. Walked over to the window. “So what’s your gut feeling on this?” I said. “You think he’s going to get out of here?”

  She told me we had done everything we could—that a lot of it depended on whether or not the Board was willing to check their baggage at the door and listen without prejudice. “We’ll just go in there and state our case point by point—everything we’ve gone over. Wait and see.”

  “I’m worried about Thomas blowing it,” I said. “Does he have to be there?”

  She nodded. “We’ve been over this already. Yes, he has to be there, and yes, he has to answer their questions.” She started to say something else, then caught herself.

  “What?” I said. “What were you going to say just then?”

  She didn’t want to worry me, she said, but Thomas had been acting a little schizy that morning—a little agitated. It was probably nothing, just an off morning.

  I sat back down and faced her. “You didn’t answer my question before,” I said.

  “What was your question?”

  “Do you think they’re going to release him tomorrow?”

  She shrugged. Told me not to bet the farm. “But, listen, Dominick. Worst-case scenario is that he stays here a year, his medication stabilizes him, he gets good treatment. By next year’s annual review, not only is he much better, but the media’s off his trail, too—on to ‘sexier’ cases, as they say.”

  I asked her if she wanted to know what the worst-case scenario was for me. “For me, it’s that one of the other fun guys you got down here sticks him in the ribs with a homemade knife or strangles him in the shower with someone’s missing shoelace.” I told her I stayed up nights thinking about shit like that.

  She said I’d probably seen too many Alfred Hitchcock movies.

  “Yeah? Is that right, Sheffer? Tell me something then. If this place is so goddamned safe and therapeutic or whatever—if everyone’s so goddamned on top of things around here—then let me ask you this.” I reached over and snatched her daughter’s picture off her desk, waved it at her. “Would you bring her down here? Let your little girl play down at Hatch for a day? Or a week? Or a whole freakin’ year, until they were on to ‘sexier’ cases?”

  She reached over to take the picture back.

  “No, really,” I said, holding it away from her still. “Come on, Sheffer. Answer the question. Would you?”

  “Stop being a jerk,” she said. She was getting pissed.

  “What’s the matter? Your maternal instinct kicking in, is it? Well, let me tell you something.” I was near tears. I was acting like a jerk—I knew that. “Speaking of mothers, I promised mine—his and mine—I told her the day she died that I’d look out for him. Okay? That I’d make sure nothing happened to him. And that’s just a little hard to do in this place. . . . She’s just a little kid. Right? Your daughter? Well, listen, Sheffer. In a weird way—in ways I can’t even explain to you—Thomas is still a little kid, too. To me, anyway. It’s always been that way. I used to have to beat kids up in the schoolyard for messing with him—used to have to make kids pay when they made fun of him so they wouldn’t do it again. We’re . . . we’re identical twins, okay? He’s a part of me, Sheffer. So it hurts, okay? The thought of him being down at this place for another year and me not able to make it safe for him—beat up the bad guys for him—it’s . . . it’s killing me.”

  I handed her kid’s picture back to her. She put it in her desk drawer and closed it. We sat there, looking at each other.

  She picked up the phone and dialed. Told security that she and I were ready to see Thomas Birdsey.

  When the guard brought him in, Thomas stood hesitantly at the door, taking me in in small, shy glimpses. There were dark raccoonlike circles under his eyes. Those jerky movements his head was making—the ones I’d noticed when I’d seen him out there in the recreation area—they were more pronounced up close. “Hey, buddy,” I said. Stood up. “How you doing?”

  His bottom lip trembled. He looked away. “Lousy,” he said.

  It was kind of ridiculous, really—they’ve got that visiting room set up like a boardroom: heavy upholstered chairs, this long table about ten feet long and five feet wide. Like we were a bunch of bankers or something. Sheffer invited Thomas to come in and take a seat. When she asked the guard if he could wait outside—give the three of us a little privacy—he shook his head. “You know better than that,” he said. He listed the visiting rules: Thomas had to stay seated on one side of the table and Sheffer and I had to sit on the other side. No hand-shaking, hugging, or physical contact of any kind. I recognized the guard; he was one of the ones who’d been on duty that first night—not Robocop. One of the others. He pulled out a chair for Thomas and told him to sit.

  Thomas clomp-clomped over to the table in his laceless wingtip shoes. I recalled the sight of those damned things riding through the metal detector the night he was admitted. They’d taken away his Bible but let him keep his wingtips.

  He sat down across from us, his elbows on the table, hand and stump facing me. I tried to make myself look at it, but my eyes bounced away. “So you’re lousy?” I said. “Why are you lousy, Thomas?”

  Half a minute went by. “Ralph Drinkwater’s a janitor here,” he said.

  I told him, yeah, I’d seen Ralph—both that first night and then again last week when he fixed a light in Sheffer’s office. “Looks pretty much the same, doesn’t he?” I said. “Hasn’t even changed that much after all these years. . . . You look good, too, Thomas.”

  He gave me a belittling snicker.


  “No, you do. Considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Well, you know. Your hand. This place. . . . They treating you okay here?”

  The sigh he let out sounded like defeat itself. “I’m thinking of having myself declared a corporation,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “A corporation. It’s for my protection. I’ve been reading about it. If I incorporate myself, I’ll be safeguarded. If someone tried to sue me.”

  “Why would anyone want to sue you?”

  He turned to Sheffer. “Can I have a cigarette?” he asked. When she shook her head, he got miffed. “Why not? They have ashtrays in here, don’t they? Why can’t I smoke if they have ashtrays?”

  “Well, for one thing,” she said, “I’ve given up smoking and I don’t want to be tempted. And for another thing—”

  “They don’t let you walk the grounds here,” he said, cutting her off midsentence. Addressing me again. “The food is disgusting.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Shit on a shingle, huh?”

  His hand moved to his mouth—covered it up the exact same way Ma was always covering up her cleft lip. “They served rice and beans for lunch yesterday,” he said. “And wheat bread and canned pineapple. There was a dead beetle in my rice and beans.”

  Sheffer asked him if he’d told anyone about it—if he’d let them know so that they could get him another serving. He shook his head. “Well, if something like that happens again, how could you handle the problem?” she asked him. “What could you do for yourself to make the situation better?”

  Ignoring her, he addressed me. “Remember when we used to take walks on the grounds on Sunday afternoons? You and Dessa and me?”

  I nodded.

  “I was thinking about that today. You two always used to stop and read the gravestones at the Indian cemetery.”

  “And you used to take off your shoes and socks and wade into the river,” I said. He seemed to drift off when I said that. “Hey, speaking about the Indians,” I said. “You hear about the Wequonnocs? They won that court case. So I guess they’re going ahead with that big casino now. Over at the reservation.” I’d waited two weeks to see him—talk to him—and now all I could do was make small talk. “Going to be huge, I guess, the way they’re talking. Las Vegas II.”

  Thomas closed his eyes. His lips moved slightly. “And he showed me a river of the water of life,” he said. “Clear as crystal, coming forth from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” He stopped. Scratched his neck with his stump. I looked away.

  “How’s your . . . ?” I said, then stopped myself, stymied by what to call it. His wound? His sacrifice? “You adjusting okay? Getting used to using your other hand?”

  He asked me if I could do him a favor.

  “What?”

  Could I go down to the river—the spot where he and I and Dessa used to walk? Could I get a jar and fill it up with river water and bring it back to him? Behind him, the guard shook his head no.

  “Why?” I said. “What do you want it for?”

  “I want to wash with it,” he said. “I think if I wash with the water from the river, it might help to heal my infection. Purify me. I’m unclean.”

  “Unclean?” I said. “What do you mean?” In the silence that followed, I forced my eyes down to his self-mutilation. The scar tissue was pink and shiny, as soft-looking as a newborn’s. As soft as Angela’s skin had been. I blinked hard—felt an involuntary tightening in my groin and stomach. “It looks pretty good now,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your . . . your wrist.”

  “I meant my brain,” he said. “I think the water might heal my brain.”

  I sat there, not saying anything. Wiped the tears out of my eyes. I probably could have counted on one hand the number of times over the years when Thomas had acknowledged his sickness like that—when he hadn’t taken the attitude that he was the reasonable one and the rest of us were crazy. They threw me: those out-of-nowhere moments when he seemed to have some inkling of his own sorry dilemma. That it wasn’t the Communists or the Iraqis or the CIA, but his own brain. Those little flickers of insight were almost worse than his Loony Toon business-as-usual. You’d see for just a second or two who was trapped inside there. Who Thomas might have been.

  I looked over at the guard. “What’s the big deal?” I said. “If I brought him a jar of water?” The guy stood there, stiff-necked, his hands behind his back.

  Sheffer said she could work on the request, but right now we needed to talk about the hearing.

  “Has the war started yet?” Thomas asked me. “I keep trying to find out, and nobody will tell me. They’ve ordered a news blackout within a fifty-foot radius of me.”

  Sheffer reminded him that they had discussed Desert Shield just that morning—that she updated him about the standoff whenever he asked her about it.

  “Anyways, I doubt there’s even going to be a war,” I said. “Bush and Saddam are like two kids out in the schoolyard. Each of them’s just waiting for the other to back down. It’s all just bluff.”

  Thomas scoffed. “Don’t be so naive,” he said.

  Sheffer reminded us again that we needed to talk about the hearing.

  “You see?” Thomas said. “They have orders to change the subject every time I mention the Persian Gulf. I’m at the center of a news blackout because of my mission.”

  “Thomas?” Sheffer said. “You remember there’s a hearing tomorrow, right? That the Review Board is going to be meeting to decide—”

  His exasperated sigh cut her off. “To decide if I can get out of here!” he shouted.

  “That’s right,” Sheffer said. “Now, I’m going to be at the hearing. And Dominick and Dr. Patel. Maybe Dr. Chase. And you’re going to be there, too, Thomas.”

  “I know that. You told me already.”

  “Okay. So what we need to do is go over a few more things with you so that you’ll make a good impression with the Review Board. Okay?”

  Thomas mumbled something about the Spanish Inquisition.

  “What’s one of the things they’re probably going to ask you about tomorrow?” Sheffer asked. “Do you remember? The thing we were talking about yesterday and this morning?”

  “My hand.”

  “That’s right. And what are you going to say when they ask you about that?”

  Thomas turned to me. “How’s Ray?”

  “Thomas?” Sheffer said. “Stay focused. Answer my question, please. What are you going to tell the Board about why you removed your hand?”

  We waited. He put his hand to his mouth and started smoking an imaginary cigarette. “Answer her question,” I said.

  No comment.

  “Thomas? Look, man, you want to get out of this place, don’t you? Maybe go back to Settle for a while? Back to your coffee wagon?”

  “In the midst of the city street, on both sides of the river, was the tree of life,” he said. Closed his eyes. “Bearing twelve fruits, yielding its fruit according to each month, and the leaves for the healing of the nations.”

  “Answer her question,” I said.

  His eyes sprang open. “I am answering it!” he snapped. “I was following a Biblical dictate! I cut off my hand to heal the nations!”

  I was beginning to lose it—beginning to feel that Sicilian temper Sheffer had warned me about. “Okay, listen,” I said. I pointed a thumb at Sheffer. “She and I have been working real hard to try and get you out of here, okay? Because we know how miserable you are here. . . . But if you start spouting this Bible stuff at that hearing tomorrow, instead of just answering their questions directly, you’re not going anywhere. You’re going to stay right here at Hatch. Okay? You understand? You’re just going to stay here and walk around without your shoelaces and eat beetles in your dinner or whatever.”

  “Uh, Dominick?” Sheffer said.

  “No, hold on. Let’s give it to him straight. You listening to me, Thomas? You’ve got to lay off that Bible bull
shit and play it smart with these Review Board honchos. You understand me? If they ask you if you regret what you did in the library, you tell them, yes, you regret it, and if they say—”

  “Whatever happened to Dessa, anyway?” he said.

  “What? . . . You know what happened. We got a divorce. Now when they say something like—”

  “Because your baby died,” he said. He turned to Sheffer. “They had a baby daughter and she died. My niece. I held her once. Dominick didn’t want me to hold her, but Dessa said I could.”

  Which was bullshit. He’d never held her—had never even seen her. I looked over at Sheffer. Looked up at the ceiling, over at the goddamned guard. “Never mind about that now,” I said. “We need to talk about the hearing. Stop it.” I could feel Sheffer looking at me—pitying the father of a dead baby. “Listen . . . listen to Ms. Sheffer, now, okay? She’s going to tell you what to say and what not to say. So we can get you out of here.”

  “Dessa came to see me when I was in the hospital,” he told Sheffer.

  “Listen!”

  “She loves me. I’m still her friend, whether she and Dominick are married or not.”

  I stood up. Sat back down and strapped my hands across my chest. This was hopeless.

  “Sure, she loves you,” Sheffer said. “Of course she does. She wrote a really nice letter to the Review Board about how she thinks you should be let out of here.”

  “I’ll just tell them the truth,” Thomas said. “That I had to make a holy sacrifice to prevent Armageddon.” His face looked suddenly arrogant, clenched. His cheeks flushed. “It would have worked, too, if they hadn’t sequestered me like this. Silenced me. They’d probably be at the peace table right now if war wasn’t so profitable. When Jesus went into the temple . . . when Jesus went into the temple and . . .” His face contorted. He began to sob. “They torture me here!” he shouted.

  The guard moved closer. Sheffer held up her hand.

  “Who does?” I said. “Who tortures you? The voices?”

  “You think putting insects in my food is the worst of it? Well, it isn’t! They hide snakes in my bed. Stick razor blades in my coffee. Push their elbows against my throat.”